bruised bodies
by samuraibeamish
Summary: She wishes she could unearth the cold concrete to resurrect the impenetrable barricade that surrounded her heart and revert back into an impulsive, foulmouthed teenager. Times were simpler, almost four years ago. He would still play martyr, withhold his true feelings and lie to her face, but at least then she could alleviate some stifled frustration. Spit an insult, break a finger.


"I — love you," she finally concedes, voice hardly stronger than a whisper and with no more conviction than a shallow breath.

It hurts. It hurts and he hates himself and he would rather count the amputated fingers and toes scattered across a bloodstained checkerboard — _he would rather gouge his fucking eyes out_ — than look into hers, reddening and brimming with saline iridescence.

It hurts because he abandoned someone who recognized the demons of loneliness hidden behind olivine eyes and strained smiles but — for some reason he could never possibly understand — loves him — _a hideous, repugnant, worthless fucking insect — _anyway.

It hurts because she is patiently awaiting his response and running away sounds much more appealing than confronting his feelings — _he doesn't understand them anyways because he is irrevocably fucked up and she deserves everything he is not —_ but she is so, so beautiful.

"Touka-chan."

His voice cracks. Everything hurts.

He should feel happy. After all, the entire objective in abandoning her almost four years ago was ensuring her safety, protecting her from afar so there would be someone to welcome him back once he finished finding answers. And here she is, crimson coursing through veins and chest trembling in erratic breath. She is alive and so, so beautiful.

If he were impulsive or somewhat confident, perhaps he would cradle within the rough of his palm the swell of her flushed cheek. Or instead, he might lace their fingers together and massage her thumb with the underside of his. Maybe he would embrace her, drape his arms around her slender frame and pretend this insignificant action could shield her from everything wrong in the world — protect her heart from suffering any further — even though he is weaker, and her grief is of direct consequence to his wretched existence. But he cannot summon enough courage to even return her eye contact.

Observant, her solemn gaze falls, trying to trace crevasses in worn concrete — distracted, ineffectual. The lines decorating her face are suddenly magnified, short stories of hardship and heartache. It hurts, watching her strength crumble because of him: a hideous, repugnant, worthless insect. But he is scared — _no_, terrified.

He is absolutely, pathetically terrified. The prospect of someone loving him makes his stomach churn. Bile is crawling up his throat like one thousand centipedes and he feels incapacitated by oscillating waves of nausea. He is so sick — _nauseous and haunted and fragmented_ — and he cannot give her anything she deserves. She does not deserve his tormented soul. She does not deserve the itch occupying his subconscious, annoying and manipulative and hell-bent on his suicide. She does not deserve someone plagued by descending numbers, someone debilitated by worsening eyesight and agonizing migraines, someone weak enough to forget everything —_ everyone_ — once important to him.

So against every strained muscle in his aching heart screaming, _just love her_, he steels himself.

"I — uh, well, Touka-chan — I don't think…".

She captures a hand subconsciously rising to touch his chin. Her hand clenches tightly around his, desperately like he is threatening to disappear again any second, and for a moment, her knuckles resemble the whiteness of his hair. She returns his hand to his side and doesn't let go.

Her eyes are still fixated at the ground. She wishes she could unearth the cold concrete to resurrect the impenetrable barricade that surrounded her heart and revert back into an impulsive, foulmouthed teenager. Times were simpler, almost four years ago. He would still play martyr, withhold his true feelings and lie to her face, but at least then she could alleviate some stifled frustration. Spit an insult, break a finger.

But memories of exposing his most vulnerable, humiliating feature — screaming,_ never come back_ — loiter, caught in the cobwebs of her mind, in places too unkind and uncomfortable to go back and dust them away.

She cannot repeat the same mistakes that creep into the forefront of her brain at night. The same mistakes she curses herself over, sometimes for hours and sometimes in passing.

"Please," she whispers. "Tell me the truth. I… I think you at least owe me that."

With the gentle breeze of her voice reaching him — her sweet inhalations and exhalations and the tender movement of her lips against each syllable hitting his face like a hurricane — a dam inside of him ruptures. The feelings he so desperately tried suppressing and the tears he didn't realize were brimming his eyelids surge outwards in a fierce tide. He should say something. He needs to say something. But his throat is flooding and his body feels so cold and he is drowning in the tears streaming furiously down his cheeks and —

And suddenly, she pulls him into a tight embrace. She pulls him out from beneath his perpetual raincloud and shelters him within her arms, engulfing him in the strong aroma of dark Arabica roast, and even though his body is shivering, he has never felt so warm. He wonders momentarily whether this warmth is emanating from her frame or radiating from deeper within. She has always been fierce and passionate.

He notices a slight dampness on his shirt but when he tries to gently pry her away, she defiantly nestles her head deeper into his sternum.

"It doesn't matter who they think you are or who you say you are," she cries and although the fabric subdues her words, the pain in her voice seeps into the honeycomb-like matrix of his bones. "Somewhere deep inside, you're still that useless idiot who believed me about overflowing the coffee, who loves shitty classic literature nobody else can understand, and — _and dammit, Kaneki_ — you would still rather run away than stay with the people who care about you."

Her shoulders wrack with sobs and shudder with hiccups.

"I — I waited for you," she chokes out, and now that she's admitted it, her tongue moves without inhibition. "I waited for you everyday and — and — and if you have another stupid martyr mission to run off to, at least come visit every once in a while, you piece of shit, Kaneki. I know that's a lot to ask, especially if you… if you don't feel the same —"

Kaneki shoves her away with an abruptness, an urgency, even he was not expecting. He seizes her shoulders with an unnecessary firmness. His entire gastrointestinal tract feels like it's been riddled with small, innumerable cuts and acid is oozing from each perforation. The acid, diffusing into his bloodstream, circulates throughout his limbs, like the corrosive creature he is. It's disgusting, really, how he could make someone so precious feel so small.

She haunted him — abysmal amethyst eyes with unbelievable sorrow — petite frame with unimaginable strength — trembling pink lips with unwavering grace, thanking his compliment of her coffee. He spent months pining after her, following a brief and impersonal first encounter. But that brief and impersonal first encounter ignited a trail of gunpowder winding all throughout his circulatory system and detonated in the center of his chest. She stirred something awake deep within him, and he couldn't even remember her name.

But even years prior, still a pathetic boy refusing to consume and completely ignorant about the wrongness of the world, she was beautiful. Mercurial, volatile — but beautiful. She was beautiful in a dark alleyway shoving a bloodied arm down his throat, and she was beautiful in a dark chapel arranging her bloodied mouth against the base of his throat. For every ounce of attraction he once felt toward Rize, there was something stronger — something different he couldn't recognize — he felt toward Touka.

Her eyes widen, crystalline amethyst perforated with saline and uncharacteristic terror that makes his heart cease beating immediately.

"I'm — I'm sorry," she stammers. "I should have known better — I should have known —"

She is interrupted because suddenly, he pulls her into a tight embrace. The strength with which he clutches her is suffocating. He is suffocating her, but like hell would she sacrifice his closeness to inhale an atmosphere not designed for ghouls anyway.

"I — uh… I'm a little messed up… But if you want — this… I am willing."

Her breathing halts abruptly, body tense. The coursing of blood in her veins slows, palpitations of her heart pause, firing of her neurons cease. Every exposed inch of epithelium becomes littered in goosebumps, chills reverberate down to the marrow. She has never felt so cold. Then all at once, everything resumes with renewed fervor.

Her fingers clutch at his shirt, too shaky to manage a sturdy grip, and she raises onto tiptoes to touch her forehead to his. His eyes close, mind and body exhausted. They maintain balance atop the delicate tightrope beneath them for several seconds, breathing too shaky and lungs too unreliable to trust their voices.

"I don't know very much about this," he admits. He rocks his forehead back and forth against hers, the morning fog of a headache beginning to cloud his mind.

"We'll figure it out," she whispers, afraid her voice would flee if she tried speaking any louder. "Come inside, Ken. It's time to rest."


End file.
